And that’s a wrap…. on week 1 of Summer Institute.
I’ve completed my first week of the Teach First Summer Institute. This blog post will journey us through my thoughts and feelings, an overview of what happened and some of the topics we covered and more as I ruminate on my week.
Monday
- Opening Ceremony (1hr30m) & Development Lead Skype (1hr)
Have you ever had that butterfly, on the edge of your toes feeling before an interview? This is how I felt as I sat nervously waiting to be accepted into the Opening Ceremony Zoom call. Monday was a crazy day from start to finish and I decided to write a post on it if you want to have a more in depth read.
The opening ceremony was the traditional inclusion of reminding us about the vision and mission Teach First strive to achieve and how Summer Institute is vital in us becoming a part of that goal. Some guests, either alumni or various organisations we had the opportunity to partner with; all with an overarching aim to inspire and motivate. As I’ve spoken about in my previous post – I loved some of the creative ideas people came up with to bridge inequality and bring about a cohesive community.
The Development Lead call was pretty straight forward, focussing on house keeping and making us aware of things such as the support structures, how Summer Institute would work and where we could find bits of information. It was a useful and informative introductory session.
Finally, I got an email at around 4:06 from our university tutor, informing us she would be in our virtual classroom for the next hour if any of us wanted to say hello. Being curious as I am, I hopped in to say hello. This turned out to be a great opportunity to get a feeling of what the long university days may be like, what the commitment would be like, and get an idea about our tutor – they were absolutely great (which was a massive bonus) and ask any questions.
Tuesday
University Day 1: 9am – 4pm
Homework (1-2hrs)
I logged onto the virtual classroom early and was met with enthusiastic ‘hello’s’ from our tutors. I knew two things would be very important to me over these session.
- Good internet connection.
- Snacks
I was lucky enough to have a stable internet connection – I don’t think I’ve ever had so many different documents open, and tabs open on my computer. Honestly, your brain is just trying to cope with navigating your computer screen let alone taking in information. The whole point of these sessions is to base our practice (teaching), in pedagogical theory (basically, research on how to teach).
The day covered our vision of English, how it should be taught, and who we wanted to be as English teachers. We covered curriculum, and we completed an exemplar English lesson together facilitated by our tutors. We used the ‘I do, We do, You do’ (Fisher and Fray) model of teaching. This enabled us to experience and observe two expert English teachers giving a lesson. We could pick out the bits we liked and bits we thought worked well or perhaps didn’t.
By the time 4pm came, I won’t lie to you. I was frazzled for want of a better word. It had been exhausting. Not only was it boiling outside, but I had gone from 13 weeks of relatively non-cognitive living to intense cognitive overload in the space of 8 hours. I made sure to look over my notes later on in the evening – good to consolidate the knowledge learnt.
By the end of day two it had been a very successful and engaging transition into Summer Institute. It wasn’t easy, but we were well supported and every step was explained clearly. Plus to make it even better our cohort of around 23 were wonderful.
Wednesday
University Day 2: 9am – 4pm
Homework (1-2hrs)
Bright eye’d and bushy tailed, I logged on at 8:50 to get myself sorted for the day. I opened the plethora of tabs I would need to engage with throughout the day, logged into the classroom and got myself topped up with water. Water is important, don’t forget to drink water.
Day 2, continued with an understanding of pedagogy, focussing on how to teach a reading lesson. We looked at concepts such as scaffolding, SRE’s, DARTS and more.I’m not sure if you guys want me to explain all these concepts, but leave a note in the comments if you want me to do a few posts on these. Oh I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned but I’m training to teach secondary English. The lesson culminated in us planning out a reading lesson in groups, following an exemplar plan and model layout.
The final module (which we had to complete as homework) looked at assessment and how we would assess students. We explored marking criteria, formative and summative assessment, why assessment is important and how we can use it. I really liked that we dove straight into the core fundamentals of teaching. On a five week intensive course, I guess there isn’t any time for rabbit holes.
There was only one section I found a bit of a drag which was the feedback session on our lesson plans. I understand that it’s an important moment for everyone to share their work, but it went on for about 2 hours and I have to work hard to pay attention anyway. To tell the truth…I did zone out a little here, but hey no one’s perfect.
Thursday
University Day 2: 9am – 4pm
Homework (1-2hrs)
Thursday was probably my favourite session overall – we spent a lot of time putting into practice what we had learnt over the past two days. In the first session we explored the topic of questioning. Who knew how much intention and technique goes into questioning.
I found it fascinating as someone that likes to ask questions as I pop them out with little to no thought. It truly intrigued me that so much thought could go into it, reflecting on this, maybe I should think a little more about how I put together my questions for people. I also found it interesting, that when asked to design questions that aimed to get a specific answer it became much harder.
The rest of the session was spent working in groups of three to develop a final lesson plan using all of the pedagogy, strategies and theory we had learnt over the past three days. This was a good exercise and I really liked the layout they gave us to build our session in. Using the Scaffolded Reading Experience we designed a lesson that included a DO NOW, pre reading, during reading and post reading exercise as well as a plenary.
Finally, we had twenty minutes to teach a part of our lesson to our partner and receive feedback. I enjoyed this section and my partner gave me some useful feedback that I could consider when doing these exercises again.
Summation
This marked the end of our first three days of our University Intensive. Overall, it’s a great experience, we had to tackle the difficulties of online learning, we were bombarded with an inordinate amount of information, we bonded as a class, we completed our first plans and even taught a little bit.
Friday
Online Learning Day (Approx. 4-5 hours)
Evidencing (1-2hrs)
Action Plan (30m)
Development Lead Zoom Call – (30m)
I was glad we had Friday to chill a little bit. So, as well as having the University Session to complete there’s a self-taught online module to complete. Now, I had my Development Lead call on Friday and I thought everything had to be completed by then. So I stayed up late on Thursday night and awoke early on Friday morning to complete the module.
However, on the call when I told him I’d completed it he was relatively surprised. I didn’t realise that I was meant to have completed it after our session on Tuesday. I learnt to read the timetable a bit more intently there…
From the call there were a few tasks I had to complete that arose from the development call. While he wanted to check in with how I was doing and reflect on the week, we also spoke about evidencing and reviewing progress. I was tasked with creating actions I could complete each week, and then evidence this to my Teaching Standards Framework. So my weekend shall consist of uploading evidence from my week and reviewing my progress.
So there we have it, my first week aboard the Teach First Summer Institute completed. I’m loving it so far, it’s challenging and engaging and I feel like I’m apart of an organisation that will ensure I have the knowledge and skills to become the best teacher I can possibly be.
If you have any questions leave them in the comments and if you’re considering a career in Teaching check out Teach First here or refer to me How to Get into Teaching Post here.
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